Month: November 2014

It would be an understatement to say that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report released this week after 7 years of research, is alarming. While reading it, I was so overwhelmed with sadness and fear that I had to walk away and have a look at the exquisite beauty of the panoramic view of the ocean here in Malibu. The thought that our lovely village community will likely be significantly affected by the effects of climate change over the next decade is mind numbing.

Needless to say, the report was absolute in its proclamation that continued emission of greenhouse gasses and warming caused by fossil fuel emissions will “increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people, species and ecosystems. Continued high emissions would lead to mostly negative impacts for… economic development and amplify risks for livelihoods and for food and human security.”

Even more alarming, the report states “climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflict by amplifying well documented drivers of these conflicts, such as poverty and economic shocks.”

It is loud and clear that we must act immediately, if we have any chance of substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and eventually decreasing CO₂ levels to zero by the end of the century. This will involve “large-scale changes in energy systems and potentially land-use over the coming decades”, including a sharp reduction in energy generated by fossil fuels.

Not surprisingly, the report also states that “effective mitigation will not be achieved if individual agents advance their own interests”, which made me contemplate who these “individual agents” may be.

While deforestation is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, it is largely happening outside of our own backyard in both Asia and Latin America. Our “individual agents” here is the US are primarily oil and gas companies that are increasingly getting rich off the back of fracking technology.

Rather than looking at our “individual agents” as greedy sorts, it really bears thinking about how we personally would react if we were told that our whole livelihood and raison d’etre were evil and harmful to humanity. It would feel like an unjustified violet attack on everything we believed in, including our charitable efforts and inclination. I’m sure you would agree that attacking our fossil fuel energy producers in such a way would probably work quite aggressively against climate change mitigation. This can already be seen in views expressed by Senate Republicans.

Let’s have a look at this picture in a completely different light, and list all of the reasons how our “individual agents” can and will make a huge impact on saving our planet and society as we know it. Shall we just give it a try?

While I am not of Buddhist faith, I was recently sent an email from a friend in the Buddhist community encouraging me to dial into the Mindfulness and Climate Action conversations hosted and arranged by One Earth Sangha. Ever curious, I started by looking at their website, which directed me to a background paper on the topic. It was extremely well drafted by Lou Leonard, Vice President of Climate Change at the World Wildlife Fund and Kritee (Kanko) a Senior Scientist for the International Climate program at Environmental Defense Fund, referencing evidence and findings of world-renowned scientific institutions.

The numbers geek in me kept going deeper and deeper into the source references of the paper leading me to the conclusion that as they say “this may be the most important decade in human history”. As confirmed by the numbers in the research, without significant and immediate reductions in current levels of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal and natural gas) and the destruction of forests, released into the atmosphere, the environment as we know it today and on which our whole society and economic survival has been developed and structured, may completely self-destruct.

I’m not sure I can recall, at least in recent memory, a body of evidence so compelling and in plain view that I did not know existed at this order of magnitude, and with such likely negative implication for the world at large. I am still asking myself how it could be possible that I and most people I know have more or less overlooked the potential radical changes to the world as we know it within a generation, if human induced climate change is not addressed with an immediate and acute sense of urgency. In my view, addressing the root of climate change is first and foremost before we can even think about other philanthropic missions. The protection and stabilization of our environment, together with current day society, is the basis on which all other philanthropic missions, such as healthcare, education, housing and humanitarianism, can be embarked upon.

Perhaps the rational logic to why we seem to be in denial of such overwhelming evidence may be a fear so great that we simply feel the challenge is too big for us to overcome, and we just shut down entirely or cannot stay the course. I applaud the action of One Earth Sangha to bring climate change to the forefront of our awareness. As they so brilliantly observe, “by increasing our awareness of our emotional response to climate change, we can become more resilient and engage more consistently. These energies can be transformed into confidence, clarity and action.”

As we all have observed, recent climate change includes such phenomena as global warming, sea-level rise, increased drought and change in storm and precipitation patterns. Stay tuned as I dig into the scientific data and potential consequences of climate change. We don’t have much time to mitigate current levels of human contribution to planetary greenhouse gases before we all must pay the consequences, least of which are economic.